Intel Preparing New Core i7 Processor

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Intel’s first wave of Arrandale chips are still steaming hot off the assembly line, but that hasn’t stopped the chip giant from introducing new Arrandale chips. They’re adding one to the new Core i7 line of processors. The Core i7-660UM, as its dubbed, will be a lower end chip in the Core i7 family.

The Arrandale chips aren’t tearing up the processor races. Instead, the new processors have a design goal of low power consumption, which they do pretty well. Most of the new chips have a TDP of just 18W. The new Intel Core i7-660UM is intended to be a ‘fast’ low-voltage chip.

The -660UM will have the same 18W TDP as its brethren, but it will clock slightly faster than the current -6xxUM models at 1.33GHz. 1.33GHz isn’t particularly impressive (although Fudzilla does point out that chip also has improved integrated graphics and most of the chipset on its socket), but you’ll be happy to know that the -660UM, via Intel’s Turbo Boost, can be overclocked to 2.4GHz. Of course, the turbo boost will run at faster than 18W, but it’s up to the end user, who hopefully show know what kind of power he can expend, to decide to overclock or not.

Like all the other chips in the -6xxUM line, it’ll have a L3 cache of 4MB. It also runs in Intel’s new BGA-1288 CPU socket. Fudzilla is expecting this chip to ship in Q3 2010. We expect the price to be upwards of $350 at launch, but no official word from Intel.